Foxwise

Chapter Four

Four

Dire rats were dog sized, but not very formidable creatures. Thorn was aware that they could be a terrible foe if there were enough of them though. Many a time he and his elves had been dispatched to get a rat out of one Underland tunnel or another.  The tracks he and Barb were following were left by three of the vermin and Thorn was hoping they would get the chance to face them. He loved the feel of the Glaive of Gladiolus in his hands and the smell of fresh blood. He skipped ahead of Barb to open the door for her, but she caught his sleeve and stopped him.

“How did the rats close the door?” She pointed down and it was clear that the fresh rat prints lead inside.

Just then a sound of clanking dishes came to them. After that there was nothing but silence.

Thorn watched as Barb concentrated on a spell. She was beautiful, he’d already decided, fierce and smart, and then he was forced to channel his sudden ardor, lest the battle berries get something besides his blood up.

Barb’s eyes shot open in what Thorn thought might have been fear and the door creaked open of its own accord before them. The elven mage cautiously pushed it the rest of the way and eased inside. Thorn followed her, drawing the Glaive as he went. They both saw a flittering rat-tail as the creature it was attached to shot up the chimney. A disturbed saucer rolled and rolled on a table as if that had been where the rat had been feeding when they disturbed it. The sound was nerve-racking and went on and on, until finally it ceased in a frantic rattle.

“Maybe the wind blew the door closed,” Thorn suggested.

“Maybe,” Barb nodded. “But I sense something bad here. I sense real evil.”

“It smells like that fireplace has been used recently,” Thorn took a deep breath and let the power of the battle berries lift his courage.

“That’s brimstone you’re smelling, not the fire hole,” Barb said before she pointed her finger at one of the cabinets and caused the door to swing open revealing a score of beady red eyes.

Both elves were instantly on guard. Thorn couldn’t figure how they were all stuffed in the cabinet so tightly, but it didn’t matter because the not-so-little vermin were now leaping out to attack.

All around the two surprised elves the cabinet doors flew wide and rats of all sizes came pouring into the room. The main door slammed shut and Thorn cleaved the first one that came close enough. He’d hoped the violent move would have scared the others but instead they went into a frenzy, even snatching up the pieces of their fallen and ravaging them as if they hadn’t eaten in months.

Barb cast forth a streak of yellow energy and Thorn saw that the rats squinted and shied away from the brightness of it. When the magic connected with the cabinet on the far side of the room, a bloody, furry mess exploded outward and those rats which weren’t rent apart in the blast came charging over the others to get at them. It was all Thorn could do to step in front of Barb and stab the nearest of them as they came.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Barb called over all the squeaky roaring noise. “There are just too many of them.”

“Arghhh,” Thorn replied as he stepped into the fray and used his decades of training to wield the magical blade.

A stab here, then a twirl, and a hacking slice that split a couple of the smaller beasts in two. Then the battle lust was on him. He saw Barb standing slack jawed as one of the larger rats leapt onto her back, but then he was forced to fight again as another wave of them closed their circle.

Blood splattered Thorn’s face and his weapon was almost torn from his grasp when it didn’t come completely free of his last victim.

He saw Barb again, this time her expression was savage and her face was bleeding. The sight of her gave him strength and he yanked his blade loose and attacked with even more vigor than before.

Another streaking flash of a yellow energy shot across the room and more rats exploded into bloody pulp. Before him, one of the largest rats he’d ever seen, a toothy bastard that was three feet tall at the shoulder, had set its beady eyes on him. This one was a real dire rat, and Thorn knew from experience that if they killed the dire rats the others would lose their courage and flee.

“Just kill the big ones!” he yelled as he lit into the one before him with a series of savage thrusts, spins, and hacks. He sank his blade into it but was tripped by some of the smaller rats as they got under his feet. In a matter of heartbeats he was swarmed over so thickly that he couldn’t even see anymore. One of the little buggers shoved its head in his mouth and he felt them pushing into every opening his armor would allow them. He felt their teeth as they started taking tiny little bites. Then the dire rat pounced on his chest sending the other vermin scrambling away. Finger long teeth bared in anticipation as warm slobber dribbled across his face.

Thorn tried to raise his sword but his arm was pinned. He tried to roll away but couldn’t. He could do little more than squeeze his eyes shut and say a prayer to Babd, the elven god of battle, and hope his life left him quickly. To make it worse, the last thing he heard as the dire rats finger long teeth closed over his face was Barb screaming now too. Somewhere in the room she was meeting the same sort of end as he.

Barb yelled again, this time she was calling his name.

“Thorn! Don’t move a muscle!” she yelled and he wondered why she hadn’t seen that he was pinned?

There was a low grinding sound then a powerful whooshing of heat flashing over him. Then he realized the dire rat was no longer there. In fact his whole area was free of them. Without hesitating, he rolled to his feet and understood why she hadn’t wanted him to move. A blast of her arcane fire had scorched everything in its path to cinders. The path he realized had passed less than a finger’s breadth over his armor, which showed clearly, with soot, how close her spell had come to ending him too.

“Look,” Barb was pointing as she wielded her dagger against the last dire rat Thorn could see. Thorn turned and saw that her fiery spell had not only killed a good portion of the rats but had blasted away another set of cabinets revealing a stairway leading down. “Go down,” she grinned through the bloody mask her face had become.

“You’ll not want to be up here when I cast again.”

 Then her dagger bit deeply into the dire rat’s neck and her hands started moving the gestures to a spell.